The Admins & Mods have collaboratively decided that the cultural banhammers are not productive in promoting a positive image of Cyburbia. We (mostly Dan) have been going through cleaning house on the older posts. There was growing concern that while 99&#37; of Cyburbians know the admins & mods are not bigots, it could be interpreted by outsiders (i.e. potential sponsors and members) as culturally insensitive. All were removed in order to improve the professionalism of Cyburbia.

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

The Admins & Mods have collaboratively decided that the cultural banhammers are not productive in promoting a positive image of Cyburbia. We (mostly Dan) have been going through cleaning house on the older posts. There was growing concern that while 99% of Cyburbians know the admins & mods are not bigots, it could be interpreted by outsiders (i.e. potential sponsors and members) as culturally insensitive. All were removed in order to improve the professionalism of Cyburbia.

Haven't seen the pigeon & statue in use yet. I guess it could be cultural, in the classical sense.

We've got a warehouse with hundreds of banhammer images.and many others that are ready to be banhammerized. We'll probably be reinstating banhammer images soon, but not the international images. Like what Suburb Repairman said, to someone not familiar with the culture and history of the site, it could lend an impression to others that we're bigoted and cliquish.

User:KevinFlys (220.249.165.14, China)Rules violation: Registration details typical of a spammer.Moderator action:Permanent ban: 11 June 2008Comments: We're being invaded by World of Warcraft and Runescape gold and power leveling spammers. We're getting them before they post ... for now.

I'm not into gaming. How does spamming a site like Cyburbia help you get points in WoW?

"So, if a city has a personality, maybe it also has a soul. Maybe it dreams." -GaimanArchBoston

According to estimates, around 100,000 people in China are employed as gold farmers, as of December 2005.[1] Chinese gold farmers typically work twelve hour shifts, and sometimes up to eighteen hour shifts. Wages depend heavily on location and the size of the gold-farming company. One gold-farming operation in Chongqing in central China with 23 gold farmers was reported to pay its employees the equivalent of about 120 U.S. dollars per month, while workers at a larger gold farm in Fuzhou earn the equivalent of about 250 U.S. dollars per month. The rising prevalence of gold farming has led to the creation of gold-farm brokerages.

Some online companies offer power-leveling services, whereby a customer pays a fixed amount for the company to level up their character. Essentially, the customer provides the company with the username and password for their account, and the company assigns an employee to play the character for the customer until a desired level is reached.

You couldn't let old "bootieboy" slip by. With a name like that, who knows what kind of insight he could've brough to our profession!!

Trust me: that fella is exactly where he deserves to be...

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.Abraham Lincoln

I thought he had a bright future on Cyburbia and probably would have started numerous thoughtful and engaging threads on planning-related matters if we'd just given him half a chance!

People will miss that it once meant something to be Southern or Midwestern. It doesn't mean much now, except for the climate. The question, “Where are you from?” doesn't lead to anything odd or interesting. They live somewhere near a Gap store, and what else do you need to know? - Garrison Keillor

The Admins & Mods have collaboratively decided that the cultural banhammers are not productive in promoting a positive image of Cyburbia. We (mostly Dan) have been going through cleaning house on the older posts. There was growing concern that while 99% of Cyburbians know the admins & mods are not bigots, it could be interpreted by outsiders (i.e. potential sponsors and members) as culturally insensitive. All were removed in order to improve the professionalism of Cyburbia.

I'm not an outsider, but I was offended by the image Dan posted a few months back (maybe more or less) of what looked like a guy being violently attacked. I stopped coming to the site. I'm glad they aren't being used anymore, even though I know no one here approves of violent beatings and even though I got a kick out of most all the other images. That one crossed a line. Anyway, thank you. I think it's best for Cyburbia.

User:ChetRules violation: Personal attackModerator action: Suspension: 4 day time-out (2 weekdays has been the standard suspension for personal attacks, hence the 4 days here since 2 will be over the weekend)Comments: The comments in the Wasilla thread were totally uncalled for, especially for a moderator on the site.

Chet- Your last Wasilla post excepted, I'm a great fan of your posts and I look forward to seeing you back here on Wednesday.

Moderator note:

~Gedunker~ Thread moved from September 2008 Suspensions and Bannings to this thread. In the future, please use this thread to discuss the topic and not the monthly thread. Thanks and carry on!

We had Pakistan banned, but unbanned the group of IP blocks on the old server when we were experiencing the crashes; longer .htaccess files contribute to server load. We're probably going to ban the country again. Unlike India, there's it's about 60&#37; spam/40% legit (and many IP blocks automatically redirected to a page advising them to register by email), we've had almost no legitimate users from Pakistan. We'll probably re-ban the IP block again.

Growth for growth's sake is the ideology of the cancer cell. -- Edward Abbey

The same person rejoined Cyburbia 8½ years later, under the ID MacKaye Revisited. A search on his posts indicates (to me) that aside from creating a sockpuppet so that he could physically rejoin the website, he has not broken Cyburbia's netiquette rules:http://www.cyburbia.org/forums/searc...archid=1404214
He appears to want to be cooperative this time around, as witnessed by his sometimes signing:

In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin

His 2010 writing style leans toward the intellectual and ideological--like some of my university professors--and I find it refreshing. I would like to publicly discuss/debate many of his points, but obviously this is not possible with a banned person.

I realize that there could be more strikes against MacKaye Revisited that I as a Cyburbian "civilian" am not privy to see.......

If his only serious offenses, however, were committed 8½ years ago, would you consider giving him the benefit of the doubt (of having improved his netiquette over the years) and allow him another chance?

The mods have the power to ban users. I don't always agree with their decisions, but I respect and stand behind them. I wanted to see how MacKaye Revisited would behave this time, but some mods disagreed, and they said "enough of this". The mod/administrator that banned him, NHPlanner, was on Cyburbia the last time Mike was around, and he was quite familiar with his antics. I trust his judgment in the banning.

That being said, this isn't a simple case of someone forgetting their password and logging in with a new username, or a minor violation of board rules in the past we're reluctant to forgive.

Discus, the message board system Cyburbia used before vBulletin, didn't have real logins, and didn't have archives. A category's thread listing page would grow forever, and old messages occasionally were culled to keep page loading times reasonable. (Yes, older message board systems were quite primitive.) We tried to save as many messages as possible when we switched to vBulletin, and the conversion process was tedious. Even with old backups and archive.org, anywhere from 50% to 75% of Cyburbia's pre-vBulletin posts are lost to the ether

You're only seeing a small sample of posts from the former incarnation of MacKaye Revisited in the archives. I'd guess that he made about 200 posts during his last tenure here. He started off as a normal user, but eventually it reached a point where just about every thread he participated in -- and there were a lot of them -- was hijacked. His favorite topics were socialism and Mondragon cooperatives; both worthy topics of discussion, but not in so many threads. I started to get complaints from other users about his thread hijacking.

I gave Mike a warning about the thread hijacking, but it was ignored. Because the pre-vBulletin Cyburbia had no fixed usernames, a simple user ban was impossible. We tried IP bans, but he would evade them. We deleted posts that he made after the "ban". Eventually, he got the hint and left. Shortly afterward, what was then the Cyburbia Cafe moved to vBulletin. The lack of fixed usernames and the inability to ban troublesome users were two reasons for dropping the big bucks on vBulletin.

I think Mike is a very intelligent, articulate person who could otherwise be a respected Cyburbian. However, his tendency to hijack threads could easily cause chaos - again. It looked like he was going to be a "one trick pony" in his most recent incarnation. Thus, the ban.

Growth for growth's sake is the ideology of the cancer cell. -- Edward Abbey